To the editor:

Currently, we recycle. We have been doing so for over a decade. There are multiple places for the residential community to take recyclable material for drop off. We use Island Recycling, which is less than 2 miles away.

My questions to the commissioners are as follows:

1. What is the fee for this service? I thought I read $7.50 per pick up in the Record. At four times per month that is $30. Is that the fee?

If $30 is the fee, that is $360 per year which is over 10 times the cost for our family to recycle material today.

We have no interest in paying more than $36 a year, which is our cost today (4 miles round trip x 12 trips a year = 48 miles x 0.65 cents per mile (IRS figure), or about $36 per year).

What alternatives are there for us?

Can we have a recycle pick up less frequently for a lower cost?

If so, how less frequently, and at what cost?

Why isn’t the county making an effort to educate the public to use existing recycling facilities? It would cost a fraction of the proposed fees that a new recycling business would impose.

Why is the county going to negatively impact the businesses that recycle today, Island Recycling in particular? From your website, it appears that the county is going to bestow the right for another business to take over what current business services provide. What right does the county have to interfere with existing recycling business?

How are the proposed fees going to be determined? Does the pubic have an opportunity to see the math and the numbers used to develop the fee?

How are future rates going to be set so that the recycling company doesn’t impose significant increases in fees?

Finally, we are in a recession! No one needs another exorbitant rate charge when there already exist recycling businesses and facilities we use today?

Richard Delmonte

Freeland